Is Hillary history?
Is Hillary history? Krista Kennell / Shutterstock.com

After F.B.I director James B. Comey announced that his team "didn't find clear evidence that Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information," I imagined a great wave of apathy washing over many Clinton supporters. Like October 2015 Bernie, back when Democrats were patting themselves on the back for having a more substantive debate than the one going on in the "clown car" to their right, many people didn't give a damn about the e-mails. They wanted to talk about income inequality and police brutality. But now people suddenly care again. Comey certainly gave haters a few mouthfuls of red (and Bernie-blue) meat to chew on (e.g. Clinton et al were "careless"), and Donald Trump thinks that voters won't "forget the rigged system that allowed Crooked Hillary to get away with 'murder.' Come November 8, she's out!" Is he right?

Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston who has done some work on the effects of scandal on congressional and presidential races and told me that generally, "candidates who are confronted with scandal tend to 1) Lose fundraising ability and 2) Lose endorsements."

But Clinton has all the money. (In June alone, she hauled in $70 million). She (as of right now) has a vast majority of the endorsements. So she's fine on that end.

"The Trump campaign will just index this [e-mail scandal] into their running narrative that Clinton is corrupt," Rottinghaus said. "Since the scandal just confirms what people already know, it won’t peel off support for Clinton or gain more support for Trump."

And the fact that she's running against Trump, whose mere Twitter feed seems to raise more eyebrows than Hillary's electronic communication habits, blunts the impact of the scandal, too.

But Comey's shade-throwing also confirms what Bernie-or-Busters already believe—basically that Clinton is an FOIA-dodging corruption machine unfit for public service—so the scandal does restrain her ability to get the party back together, which is something that needs to happen quickly. "This [e-mail scandal] might slow that process, but it doesn't end that process," Rottinghaus said.

Now, if Hillary woke up next to the pool boy or pool girl, or got caught up in some other scandal that played against type, Rottinghaus speculates that she might be in a little more trouble come November.

"I would contrast this kind of scandal (an ongoing scandal) with something like an October surprise, where you have a completely new story with a new set of facts that people didn’t know before," he said. "That’s a more damaging scandal than the e-mail scandal because the e-mail scandal has already been discussed and investigated for months."

But what kind of scandal might end Trump, a candidate who jokes that he could stand in the middle of 5th Ave. and shoot somebody and not lose voters? An in-person breach of cordiality, Rottinghaus guesses.

In this piece for the Statesman, Rottinghaus compares Trump vs Clinton to Williams vs Richards, the 1990 gubernatorial race in Texas. Williams was the guy who said that if rape was inevitable, then women should just "relax and enjoy it." Despite saying a bunch of repugnant nonsense like that, he was leading Richards in the polls by 12 points. But then Williams did the one thing you just don't do in America: He refused to shake Richards's hand in public once. According to Rottinhaus, the slight (plus Williams's admission that he didn't pay taxes in 1986) sunk him.